Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
Incidentally, why isn't "spacecraft" another word for "interior design"?

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solar cremation

Going down in a blaze of light
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1) People die, even if you believe in new-age stuff or alternative medicine etc.

2) Burial takes a lot of space and not evrybody would like to cast such a space-claim after they have passed on. Being eaten by maggots and bug may also create some aversion against burial

3) Creamation is usually done with fossil fuels or local wood. Both are not very good for the environment.

4) Why not use the sun as the energy source for cremations?

That is the idea, here is how I see something like that would be implemented: the central location is a stonehenge like structure. In the center is an altar-like structure that can be raised from groundlevel to 10-20 feet high. Each mourner is, if they wish to participate, handed a double-sided mirror with a hole in it, and very dark sunglasses. Outside of the central structure are fields of pole-mounted mirrors that track the sun and focus it above the central altar. After the required ritual last ceremonies have been performed, the altar + corpse are slowly raised into the focal point of the mirror fields. In the final moments the coprse will be lit up literally and probably blind the onlookers (hence the sunglasses). The participating mourners can start/join with their own mirros, similar to the widow/family throwing the first hand of earth on the coffin.

To protect the public from nasty odors that come with cremating dead people, there is a big tray below the wireframe that holds the body where the ashes can fall into. Air is sucked in from the sides of this tray to be cleaned and expelled further off.

Offcourse you will need to locate this facility in a sunny country (maybe India, as they have a tradition of woodpyre funerals) but that should be no problem, as this grandeur is for the whealthy, one woould assume they can travel.

nietsch, Mar 22 2006

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today at the solarematorium... http://www.energiev...m/spiegelwueste.jpg
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 22 2006]

Sun Crematorium Sun_20Crematorium
An earlier version of this same idea here in the halfbakery. It had been pre-baked back then, too. [jurist, Mar 24 2006]

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       is there a spelling cremation?
xandram, Mar 22 2006
  

       Followed by a pedant hunt. Once we round them all we'll hang them from a supermarket express checkout line "10 item's or less".
methinksnot, Mar 22 2006
  

       When you were burning up wouldnt you be about the same as the fossil fuels that you didnt use in the first place. Thermal Conversion would be Better.
jhomrighaus, Mar 22 2006
  

       Well it's not being dragged out and left for the wolves, but I like it.   

       @jhomrighaus: Unless you have eaten a lot of foodproducts derived from fossil carbon deposids (AKA mineral oil), the amount of CO2 a body releases is exactly compensated for by the amount of carbon it stored when growing/living.
nietsch, Mar 22 2006
  

       The same could be said for wood.
Ling, Mar 23 2006
  

       //nasty odors// I attended a cremation in Indonesia. I had to get up before dawn to join the precession, and by the time the cremation started it was afternoon and I was very hungry. Disturbingly, the odours were like a delicious barbeque.
spidermother, Mar 23 2006
  

       Cancel my Viking burial, I'm getting torched by the sun!
wagster, Mar 23 2006
  

       //maybe India// So what you are saying is that everyone who is wealthy should go to India to be creamated? hmmmm...might be overkill seeing as how the amount of greenhouse gases released in creamatation is negligible.   

       Good proof of concept though.
the fiddler, Mar 23 2006
  

       [spidermother] Are you a cannibal?
DesertFox, Mar 23 2006
  

       How do they keep the birds quiet?
Texticle, Mar 24 2006
  

       For people who cannot attend you might mount a mirror an a robot device that is connected to the internet. BTW you would need alot of mirrors so I do not think it will work as proposed. I also wonder what happens if the weather does not cooperate.
geo8rge, Mar 24 2006
  

       It generally rains at funerals...
Ling, Mar 24 2006
  

       Didn't Archimedes *bake* this idea against the Roman fleet in 212 (or 214, depending on your source) B.C.? And we also discussed it here in the halfbakery back in 2002 AD. (See Link).
jurist, Mar 24 2006
  

       y not just pile a bunch of bodies in2 a spaceship n send it 2 the sun?
wakeNbake, Mar 24 2006
  

       cos itz v spensive :) :/(88*
wagster, Mar 24 2006
  

       AAAAAAAAA++++++++
methinksnot, Mar 24 2006
  

       //[spidermother] Are you a cannibal?// Not especially, [DF], that's why it was disturbing. Although I was discussing the cannibalism of spider mothers by their offspring elsewhere ... and my biology training tells me that people are basically just meat. Oh, wait, now I sound like a psychopath as well as a cannibal. (Finds self in hole. Stops digging.)
spidermother, Mar 27 2006
  

       i think it could work but it would do better to bury a couple of bodies at once and maybe put some old newspaper around the body or some oil sained clothes on the person so they cath fire quicker...or else everyone's arms will get tired ....and yet some peple won't want to be burned so who knows....but i do like the shuttle idea except of all the fuel it would waste cause like hundreds of people die everyday or so and it is to expensive as said above.....just a thought
vbtallhobbit, Aug 09 2006
  


 

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